I watched this last night and enjoyed it immensely… though probably not as it was intended. It is hard for me to imagine Sir Christopher Lee as campy but this was so, so very close.
Were the film makers of the 70’s unaware of the films they were making or was the audience supposed to be in on it?
I mean really, they mention vampires can be killed by running water and later a vamp is destroyed by a shower? That has to be intentional right? Right? And Alucard?
“Alucard” ("Dracula spelled backwards, usually used as an alias for the vampire) has a long history. It was used in [Son of Dracula back in 1943, and has been used numerous times since, not only in movies, but in videogames, comics, and the like:
“I only invited the Stoneground.”
I quite enjoyed Dracula 2000, starring Gerard Butler as the title bloodsucker. The sequels, not so much.
Hammer films knew they were making camp but they were also making money. The Audience enjoyed the camp and some of the films mostly rose above the camp like the original The Wicker Man (1973). Though upon checking that was British Lion and not Hammer.
Hammer Films and Roger Corman turned out cheap, entertaining, mostly campy films quite successfully. These 2 studios were the best of the 60s and 70s schlock masters.
I’m not a film buff so I don’t know which are actually Hammer Films, I usually think 70’s British horror to be Hammer Films. I do like them, just wondering what the mindset was. For instance, The Fearless Vampire Hunters, the actors were definitely in on the joke, Peter Cushing and Sir Christopher seem to be playing it straight, but that shower scene and Johnny Alucard gave me pause.
I was watching these on TCM and the host mentioned The Satanic Rites of Dracula was a sequel which I have never heard of, but I will have watched it before Halloween ends!
Hammer Films started in the 50s and rolled into the 70s. They were more serious early on but by the 60s got campy and by the 70s high-camp. The made excellent use of all the old manors, castles and moors of the UK to keep set costs cheap. They also drew on a large common costume collection for all their period pieces.
There was a Hammer Films before their Horror movies that goes back into the 30s, but the Horror films got rolling mid-50s.
The Hound of the Baskervilles starring Peter Cushing as Sherlock Holmes in the mid-50s is probably their best non-horror film and well it was still somewhat spooky in the end.
Does anyone know if there’s anything different in the copyright for Satanic Rites? It seems like that particular film, sometimes under a different name, always is the one that shows up in the “50 Horror Movies” “20 Vampire Movies” etc DVD compilations. Always that one when it’s the worst of the bunch–so I’ve always been curious if there’s some rights thing that makes it cheaper.
I’ve seen most of the Universal monsters that were made by Hammer in the 50’s and several of the Quatermass movies, I like the old horror much better than most of the new stuff.
I don’t know, I haven’t come across the movie yet, still searching.
Hammer licensed it to cheapo outfit Dynamite Entertainment for distribution in the US around 1980. It seems that Hammer had not registered it with the US Copyright office previously, so there was no paper trail of copyright in the States. Thus, it effectively passed into public domain in the United States. It is still protected in the UK and most other parts of the world, though.
Back to the original post: I actually prefer *AD 1972 *to most of the films in the series after the 1958 original. They lack interesting protagonists, and seem to be “period for the sake of period” in most instances. In other words, they look like Hammer Dracula movies, but not much goes on. The nadir may be Dracula, Prince of Darkness, wherein the dreadful Count has no lines - he just jumps around in his cloak and snarls. Say what you want about Johnny Alucard, but he’s a character. It also helps that we have Cushing here along with his fetching granddaughter. Their presence makes it much clearer who the heroes are.